Cluster-based supercomputers and their performance and applications
Abstract:
The world's supercomputers are ranked in a TOP500 list, which is updated in June and November each year. A large portion of the TOP500 is occupied by PC clusters, the easiest and most cost-effective way to construct supercomputers. In fact, about 80% of these machines are cluster systems, including three systems in the top-10 list. Cluster-type supercomputers are based on commodity processors (also with accelerators) and interconnection networks where the latest technology pushes the advantage to use it as parts of supercomputers. In this lecture, I will introduce representatives of these cluster-based supercomputers, especially Japan’s current fastest one, which we are operating. Also, I will introduce several advanced applications for these systems as the highest level of computational science research.
About the speaker:
Dr Taisuke Boku received Master and PhD degrees from the Department of Electrical Engineering at Keio University, Japan. After his career as assistant professor in Keio's Department of Physics, he joined the Center for Computational Sciences (formerly the Center for Computational Physics) at Japan's University of Tsukuba where he is currently the deputy director, the HPC division leader and the system manager of supercomputing resources. He has worked there for more than 20 years on HPC system architecture, system software, and performance evaluation on various scientific applications. During this time, he handled the central role of system development on the massively parallel processor CP-PACS (ranked number one in 1996's TOP500), FIRST (hybrid cluster with gravity accelerator), PACS-CS (bandwidth-aware cluster) and HA-PACS (high-density GPU cluster), as the representative supercomputers in Japan.
From 2016, he has been working as the system operation manager of Oakforest-PACS, the fastest supercomputer in Japan, operated by the Joint Center for Advanced High Performance Computing (JCAHPC). He also contributed to the system design of K Computer as a member of the architecture design working group in RIKEN, a Japanese research institute, and is currently a member of the system architecuture working group on Post-K Computer development.
Dr Boku was a co-author of a paper that received the ACM Gordon Bell Prize in 2011.